"And your--your name?" went on Cameron huskily.

"Warren--Jonas Warren."

That name might as well have been a bullet. Cameron stood erect,
motionless, as men sometimes stand momentarily when shot straight
through the heart. In an instant, when thoughts resurged like
blinding flashes of lightning through his mind, he was a swaying,
quivering, terror-stricken man. He mumbled something hoarsely and
backed into the shadow. But he need not have feared discovery,
however surely his agitation might have betrayed him. Warren sat
brooding over the campfire, oblivious of his comrade, absorbed in
the past.

Cameron swiftly walked away in the gloom, with the blood thrumming
thick in his ears, whispering over and over:

"Merciful God! Nell was his daughter!"



III


As thought and feeling multiplied, Cameron was overwhelmed. Beyond
belief, indeed, was it that out of the millions of men in the world
two who had never seen each other could have been driven into the desert
by memory of the same woman. It brought the past so close. It showed
Cameron how inevitably all his spiritual life was governed by what had
happened long ago. That which made life significant to him was a wandering